Once a legend

Semi conflict, honest IPO, and earnings time.

Apr 12, 2021

Hi 👋, Tanvi here.

Filter Coffee hits your inbox every morning with notable tech and business news scoops to jump start your day.

Let’s go ahead and get started:

Kick off the week hot ☕

✅ Just pay whatever ya can, pls?—GOI vs. Cairn energy took a weird turn. Sensing that GOI won’t buckle easily, the bois in fancy suits at Cairn Energy come with a friendly proposition: “return to us the billion dollars you owe, and we’ll invest $500 million into any energy project of your choice in India”. Tempting offer, but if GOI buckles, could be spun as letting a foreign corporation dictate where government spending goes.

✅ What is privacy—Clubhouse joins the elite big-tech data leak club after personal data of 1.3 million users was found peddled on a popular hacker forum. Stats include names, social media profile names, and other details. The impact isn’t as wide as the humongous leak coming out from the Facebook and Linkedin camps recently, but 1 million is almost 10% of all of Clubhouse's last known user base. But then are you even legit big-tech without a couple such incidents under your belt?

Unimpressed Real Housewives GIF by I Dream of NeNe: The Wedding

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Instadapp is a smart crypto wallet and API service that allows developers to seamlessly move their crypto holdings across protocols to earn maximum interest on their assets.

One of their most disruptive features is the Debt Bridge which allows users to easily migrate debts across protocols, specifically between Maker Vaults and Compound Finance.

Instadapp aims to be the default single-window to multiple DeFi services, offering a service well optimized for heavy-developers as well as everyday users, and recently raised a promising round from Silicon Valley biggies including Naval Ravikant and Balaji Srinivasan.

Sucks to be Boeing 👎

Problems with Boeing’s fleet show no signs of ending—the company assessed a fresh flaw in the electrical systems of its 747 Max aircrafts, forcing a thorough review of over 450 of its planes.

FYI, these are the same planes that were involved in the fatal crashes a couple years ago, that had forced Boeing to ground its entire fleet for the longest time in history.

90 of those crafts are now currently in operation, while the rest were parked in Boeing’s facilities—all of which will now be inspected and fixed, adding weeks to the company’s delivery schedules, pissing off clients and further depressing an already struggling business franchise.

Meanwhile, it’s becoming a thankless struggle to be a $BA investor:

Burnt through $20 billion in cash to deal with the pandemic, as airlines stop coming for purchases
Revenues of 2020 are down 44% since the best year of 2018
Boeing stock stubbornly down 40% since the crashes began in 2019

Once an iconic giant, reduced down to a nightmare for everyone...

Autoland drama 🙄

Two major global electric vehicle batteries suppliers, SK Innovations and LG Energy, settled a legal tussle last night, ending a jam that threatened to jeopardize the progress of the electric vehicle industry for the US and several of its friends.

Some backstory—South Korea based SK Innovation, a key supplier of EV components worldwide, was accused by its competitor LG of stealing essential trade secrets. LG was confident of proving SK the bad guy, but then SK did one ugly, destroying evidence that’d clearly prove its wrongdoing.

US regulators were pissed, and bringing its hammer down moved to ban SK from conducting business anywhere in the US, threatening to snatch the billions of dollars in investments the company had made to build local manufacturing facilities.

But then, the move would also mean the US would now have to find a replacement for its needs of EV parts, which is impossible to do overnight, and could end up weighing heavily on the country’s attempt at outpacing China in the EV races.

Finally, the Biden admin intervened in the matter, brought both LG and SK into the White House for some hard talks, and managed to get the duo to settle and hug it out.

What does it mean?

Grandpa Biden just gained some political points for saving 6,000 jobs in the state of Georgia, where key elections are coming up within 2 years
Ford and Volkswagen CEOs can sleep easy—because their supply chain won’t be hurt any more, as they figure out how to compete with Tesla
US’ recently proposed $2.2 trillion infrastructure plan, with includes nearly $175 billion of spending to make EVs locally now has 1 less hiccup to deal with

Bottomline: global automotive semiconductor market is projected to more than double from current levels to top $100 billion+ by 2030. It's a hot theme for stock portfolios right now, and solving this logjam keeps the industry rolling.

Meanwhile, turning heads to ride hailing for a bit,

Didi Chuxing, the largest ride-hailing company in China has filed for its sizzling hot IPO in the US, ditching its parent country. Not really surprising when you look at how the Chinese screwed over the Ant Group recently!

Didi could be valued at a monstrous $100 billion—for comparison, Uber is valued at $107 billion, while Ola’s somewhere under $10 billion.

Fun fact, Apple could be minting $5 billion on a stake Tim Cook took in 2016.

I’ll be honest ☝️

Celebs shilling baby products and make-up items on Insta is often viewed as an object of mockery—well, not if you’re raking in hundreds of millions!

Actress Jessica Alba’s brand called Honest Company, which sells diapers and wipes, made bank on the pandemic’s craze for sanitization, and is now apparently planning a Nasdaq IPO.

The business pulled in $300 million in revenue last year, growing 28% YoY, with baby diapers literally accounting for 63% of the revenues (we see you millennial Insta-mamas).

Why care—influencers leading such examples, from side-hustle launch to IPOs will end up solidifying the foundation of the creator economy, boosting evidence that initial distribution earned via unconventional channels does have the capacity to drive institutional quality outcomes, further heating investor interest in this game.

Next up— Mr. Beast pizza, Tanmay Bhatt investing app?

Otherwise a lazy weekend, with investors snapping off those alarms to take it easy on Sunday, before earnings-craze takes control starting Monday.

Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citibank, Pepsi, HDFC, Broadcom—many biggies are set to kick it off this week!

What else are we snackin’ 🍿

😷 COVID is getting scary - India reported more than 1 lakh COVID-19 cases for the fifth day in a row marking the highest spike ever in a day, with live active cases now topping 11 lakh. The single day death toll crossed 800 after nearly 6 months. Maharashtra itself accounted for 64k cases with the death toll going up to 349. Legit bacc.

Meanwhile, here’s some perspective.